OpenDNS Now Used on Half of All U.S. College and University Campuses

October 19, 2011

Leading Security + DNS provider OpenDNS announces its service is being used on a staggering 50 percent of all U.S. college and university campus networks to secure and protect students, faculty and assets, and boost network speed and reliability.

(PRWEB) October 19, 2011

OpenDNS, the world’s largest and fastest-growing provider of Internet security and DNS services that deliver a safer, faster and more intelligent Internet experience to everyone, today announced that its service is now present on a full half of all U.S. college and university campus networks. The adoption of OpenDNS in the higher education sector is unprecedented.

Deployments of OpenDNS on higher education institution networks vary from entire-campus-wide, as in the case of leading U.S. schools like Vanderbilt University and George Washington University, to individual departments, computer labs, faculty lounges and student dormitory housing.

Colleges and universities using OpenDNS campus-wide predominately choose OpenDNS for its industry-leading malware-protection functionality. OpenDNS both protects against malware infections and uniquely prevents malware-infected machines from communicating out with command and control servers, thus rendering the malware ineffective and protecting the infected host machine and the network itÃ¢s using to connect to the Internet. IT staff at colleges and universities are tasked with managing a network used by students and their often malware-infected Internet-connected devices, so adding the hardened outer shell that ensures malware is unable to get in and out is a critical component of their effective, multi-layer security strategy. In some cases student government organizations have actually approached school officials and requested that OpenDNS be deployed widely to both improve network performance and keep students safe and protected online.

Ã¢Å“OpenDNS is an extremely effective and flexible service that we have found in protecting Vanderbilt UniversityÃ¢s computing infrastructure against Web-based malware attacks,Ã¢ said Salvador Ortega, Director of Enterprise Network Security for Vanderbilt University. Ã¢Å“In the last 6 months we have prevented the visit to 2.5 million malware, phishing and bot related sites. Its ability to be effectively implemented in a heterogeneous distributed computing environment separates it from competitors and aligns an organization to effectively protect its technology infrastructure in a post PC consumerized work place.Ã¢

Ã¢Å“Our initial deployment of OpenDNS Enterprise was literally done by flipping a dhcp switch to change our DNS settings Ã¢“ it was that easy. By simply changing DNS settings we were able to deploy OpenDNS in 20 minutes and instantly get our entire network and users protected,” said David Kleiner, Manager of Enterprise Network Engineering for George Washington University. “With OpenDNS Enterprise weÃ¢ve taken a more proactive approach to blocking malware before it hits our networks and machines rather then spending large amounts of time and resources trying to mitigate it.Ã¢

“OpenDNS is the single best service I’ve found for both proactively securing our network from malware and botnets, and dramatically increasing network performance in terms of speed and reliability,” said Darley Ware, Senior Network Administrator for Belmont Abbey College. “We use OpenDNS campus-wide and I would recommend it highly to other colleges and universities.”

Ã¢Å“OpenDNS provides another layer of protection so websites that are known to be malicious are kept from my end users,Ã¢ said Richard Gordon, IT Manager, Department of English, Georgia State University.

The clear technical innovator in the security + DNS space, OpenDNS regularly introduces never-before-seen features and functionality that improve the Internet experience for 30 million-plus people around the world. The combination of the OpenDNS-introduced speed improvements, plus its cutting-edge DNS-based security, drives people around the world, including IT professionals at U.S. colleges and universities, to choose OpenDNS for a better and faster Internet.

Ã¢Å“As a huge proponent of education and the opportunities it can afford you, IÃ¢m personally thrilled about the unprecedented adoption of OpenDNS by colleges and universities in the United States,Ã¢ said OpenDNS CEO David Ulevitch, a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, MO. Ã¢Å“Providing rock-solid security that can be relied upon 100% means network administrators and Internet security professionals at schools are free to focus on providing students the resources they need to be successful, and spend far less time tracking down and removing infections on the networks they manage.Ã¢

In addition to OpenDNSÃ¢s presence on half of all U.S. college and university campuses, OpenDNS is chosen today by:

1. More than 30 million people around the world, accounting for nearly 2% of all Internet users.

2. Fortune 10 organizations with globally distributed offices, primarily to secure their networks from malware, botnets and other threats.

3. More than 1 in 3 U.S. public K-12 schools, including some of the largest like San Diego, Baltimore, Detroit and Philadelphia public school systems.

The full list of U.S. colleges and universities OpenDNS used to determine the percentage of which are using OpenDNS was compiled by the University of Texas and can be found here: http://www.utexas.edu/world/univ/alpha/

About OpenDNS

OpenDNS is the world’s leading provider of Internet security and DNS services, enabling the world to connect to the Internet with confidence on any device, anywhere, any time. OpenDNS provides millions of businesses, schools and households with a safer, faster and more intelligent Internet experience by protecting them from malicious Web threats and providing them control over how users navigate the Internet, while dramatically increasing the network’s overall performance and reliability. For more information about OpenDNS, please visit: http://www.opendns.com.